V
Inthe afternoon of the next day a slight and forlorn figure left the precincts of the little room. Alone the boy stole out of the shop, thatvia mediato the great world out of doors. Timorous of aspect he entered the ever-moving throng in the streets of the great city. At first he hardly dared to look at the faces of the street-persons or to listento their words; for he was clad in a kind of fear; he was about to pluck the fruit of mysterious knowledge. After awhile, however, he took a little courage. Covertly, and in dread lest his woeful ignorance should be discovered, he began to mark the faces of the street-persons, and to listen that he might hear their words. He even grew so bold as to follow two street-persons whose voices were audible in discourse. Others, whom he observed to be lingering in talk on the pavement, he would approach warily. But in spite of this eager pursuit of knowledge he was obliged to confess that the conversation of these street-persons was as unintelligible as their newspapers.
In the course of his wanderings among the streets of the great city, the boy’s attention was at last attracted by the most beautiful creature he had ever seen outside his dreams and the pages of the ancient authors. She was just a common woman street-person in a particularly gay and handsome dress, yet her skin shone like marble, and her hair was dark and glossy like the plumage of some wonderful bird. A little girl, also dressed in great beauty, was at her side. She had an aureole of golden curls, which to the boy seemed all woven of sunbeams and gossamer. They were walking in an opposite direction to that in which he was going, but in a sudden transport of delight at their appearance he turned and followed them.
Presently the beautiful woman street-person and the little girl stayed their steps to look in the window of a huge and brilliantly decorated shop. The interior seemed so dazzling to the boy that it might have been the palace of a magician. While he stood a little way off observing street-beauty preoccupied with the street-beautiful—and he was fain to confess that when closely observed the street-beautiful seemed much nearer to the beautiful of rare and strange authenticity with which he held constant intercourse, than he had ever suspected—a handsome man street-person, wearing fineclothes, sauntered towards the woman and the little girl.
This man also stayed to look in the bright windows of the shop. To the great surprise and curiosity of the boy, who was observing him closely, although this man spoke neither to the woman nor the little girl nor claimed their attention in any way, his hand entered the woman’s pocket and took out some article which he transferred to his own pocket in his closed fist. Then, without in any way attracting the regard of the woman and the little girl, this handsome and finely-dressed male street-person sauntered away from the shop in just the same careless and leisurely fashion in which he had come near it.
A little while afterwards the woman and the little girl entered the shop. Although the boy was awed by the superb nature of its precincts, his timidity was overcome by the most powerful impulse that had ever been excited in him. It was too potent to resist. Therefore he followed the woman and the little girl into the gorgeous interior, devouring them with his gaze.
A second tall and handsome male street-person, also dressed finely, came forward to greet the woman and the little girl. He bowed to them with graceful deference.
“Let me look at one of thosepeignoirsyou have in the window,” said the woman.
The sound of her voice was so loud and harsh that a cold thrill went through the boy’s veins.
“Certainly, madam,” said the tall man. “Will you kindly go forward? Straight on up the stairs.”
In the middle of the great shop was a broad flight of richly carpeted stairs. The woman, the little girl, and the tall man ascended these. Involuntarily, as if drawn by a magnet, the boy followed them up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs was another great and glittering room. Here were counters and chairs, resplendent articles of wearing apparel strewn allabout; and some other women street-persons, who wore no hats, yet very good to look upon and dressed in neat black clothes. The beautiful woman sank languidly upon a chair. The little girl with the golden curls began to roam about the great room.
Quite suddenly the little girl chanced to see the boy, who stood gazing at her with rapture in his eyes. She walked up to him fearlessly as though he were one of her chief friends. She looked upon him in such a manner of artless simplicity that his cheeks began to burn with gladness.
“I yike oo,” said the little girl in a voice so loud and clear that it could be heard all over the great room. “Would oo yike to kiss me?”
The woman half-turned in her chair and looked at the boy coldly and steadily. As his eyes met hers the blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins.
“Come here immediately,” she said to the little girl in the loud tone she had used down-stairs to the tall man. “What a horrid-looking boy! He has a sore on his face.”
The boy grew petrified with fear and distress. As he reeled against one of the counters, with no more life in him than a stone, one of the women in black came up to him.
“You have no right whatever to be here,” she said roughly. “How dare you come in!”
The boy, numb with terror, could hardly apprehend that he was being addressed.
“Miss Sharp,” said the woman in black, turning to one who was similarly attired, “fetch Mr. Parley. This boy has no right whatever to be here.”
The tall man came up.
“Mr. Parley,” said the woman in black, “this boy has been found in this department. Oughtn’t he to be searched?”
“What do you mean by coming into this shop?” said the tall man, turning to the boy very roughly.
“I—I—I d-don’t think I know, sir,” the boy stammered in a voice that was not audible.
The woman with the little girl rose from her chair suddenly.
“Why, where is my purse!” she cried in a tone of angry surprise.
A great outcry seemed to arise all at once. Excited street-persons sprang into being on this side and that. They emerged from behind curtains, doorways and recesses; they came pressing forward until they formed a circle of startled faces around the boy. One and all seemed to be staring with incredulous dismay at an object in their midst.
When the boy had recovered a little from the shock of being addressed in a public manner by street-persons, he began to look about him with a sense of bewilderment, which, however, was quite impersonal. He appeared to be standing in the centre of some strange incident, yet seek as he might he could not discern its nature. The buzz of eager tongues all around seemed to be discussing, that is as far as he could apprehend the queer language that they spoke, some remarkable creature who in sober verity did not appear to be present at all.
“How shocking it is to see crime stamped on such a young face!” he could distinguish as the indignantly spoken words of the street-woman who had lost her purse.
“I do hope the police won’t be long,” said one of the women in black.
“You are sure, Miss Sharp, you saw no confederates?” he heard the tall man say.
“There were no confederates,” said an angular woman with great impressiveness.
“Ah!” said another woman, drawing a breath of relief, “here’s the police.”
The burly forms of two extremely dignified and curiously dressed street-persons, whom the boy’s knowledge of the practical sciences enabled him to identify as police constables, appeared through the ring of excited faces. After they had held some little intercourse with the bystanders, which to theboy was not intelligible, to his astonishment and great consternation one police constable seized him by the right arm, the other by the left. With much celerity they turned out all his pockets and exposed their content to view. Then they began to pull him about in a most curious and alarming manner. They twisted his body this way and that. They gripped him, and shook him, and punched him, and pressed him. They took off his boots and looked into his mouth. The only articles they found in his possession were a handkerchief, fourpence in coppers, and an elzevir volume of Sophocles printed at Düsseldorf in 1640.
“We can’t find no purse, ma’am,” said the more burly of the two police constables, speaking slowly and heavily, “but no doubt you’ll hidentify this?”
He offered the owner of the missing purse the volume of Sophocles.
“I shall identify nothing of the kind,” said the woman angrily. “I want my purse; I can’t live without it,” and then she said with a cold vehemence, “If my purse is not restored to me immediately it will be most serious for everybody. My husband is a member of the Government.”
At this announcement a profound sigh appeared to escape the ever-increasing circle of spectators. The excitement depicted in their faces deepened perceptibly.
“Might I ask for the name of your husband, madam?” said the tall man, with a very grave air.
“My husband,” said the woman in a tone which was quite fit to address a mass meeting, “is Lord Pomeroy, the President of the Board of Public Enlightenment.”
“Then your ladyship is the Countess of Pomeroy!” said the tall man in a voice of awe.
“I have that misfortune,” said the woman, in a tone still louder than any she had used before. As she spoke she looked round at all about her, and in the act of so doing her eyes seemed to bulge out of her head like those of a reptile.
Each police constable saluted respectfully.
“Miss Sharp,” said the tall man, “fetch the manager at once.”
The woman in black tore her skirt and knocked down a china ornament, owing to the expedition with which she went forth to do so.
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” said the more amply nourished of the two constables, “but I’m afeared we must ax you to prefer a charge.”
“I have nothing whatever to do with the charges,” said the woman tartly. “I merely ask for my purse; I can’t live without it.”
“Well, my lady,” said the fatter of the two constables, “we can’t do nothing unless you prefers a charge.”
“These people are concerned with the charges,” said the woman, including all present by a comprehensive wave of the hand. “The charges areentirelytheir affair. They must pay all costs. I hold thementirelyresponsible for the loss of my purse.”
“Well, your ladyship——”
“Please don’t be stupid, constable,” said the woman. “One feels it is trying you highly. But if these people prove unreasonable you had better communicate with Lord Pomeroy at 220, Carlton House Terrace.”
The throng seemed to grow greater about the boy. The voices of the street-persons seemed to increase in volume and earnestness. By this he was divested of every tremor of fear. All his emotions were merged in wonder and bewilderment, and an overpowering desire to know what would happen next.
An obese and bald-headed man, with superb side-whiskers, who wore a white waistcoat and very bright boots, came forward. His air was a singular admixture of authority and deference. The woman who had lost her purse was now rating the fatter of the two police constables at the top of hervoice. The man in the white waistcoat appeared to develop a cough as he stood listening. Once or twice he glanced round at the onlookers, yet affected that he had not done so.
In the meantime the only person on the huge premises who did not seem to be ministering to this spectacle was the little girl with the golden curls. She had strayed away behind one of the counters farther up the room, and was engaged in ransacking several boxes of dolls. Those which particularly appealed to her fancy she stuffed in the pockets of her coat.
After a good deal of argument between the woman who had lost her purse and the more amply nourished of the two police constables, in the course of which the woman said some extremely rude things in an extremely loud voice, all of which were received with much deference, especially by those to whom they were not addressed, she called to the little girl. Cramming another doll in her pocket that fairy-like creature ran to her mother just as that person, somewhat hoarse and red in the face, led the way down-stairs accompanied by the tall man and the manager, each of whom, for a quarter of an hour past, had been issuing somewhat irrelevant instructions to the woman in black and other subordinates.
Behind these three Olympian figures, yet at an effective interval, came the scarcely less Olympian figures of the two official representatives of law and order, whose portliness of aspect, dignity of bearing, and magnificent self-possession were enhanced by the fact that a frail, bewildered and anæmic-looking boy was in their concentrated clutch. A somewhat incongruous but profoundly impressed assemblage brought up the rear of the procession.
A hansom cab and a four-wheeler were drawn up in readiness at the side of the kerb opposite the doors of the shop. Quite a crowd was besieging the pavement, although perfect order was maintained by a small but diligent posse of policeconstables of the X division. When the owner of the purse emerged from the precincts of the shop each constable saluted with military precision, and then proceeded to hustle stray members of the multitude away from the door. As the woman and the little girl entered the hansom with the aid of the tall man and the man in the white waistcoat, and with the further aid of two police officers, some of the bystanders removed their hats.
The woman seemed to be a little exhilarated by the proportions attained by the crowd, and also by the respectful warmth of her reception. She stood up in the hansom and addressed the crowd as though it had been a public meeting.
“I hold you entirely responsible for the loss of my purse,” she said, looking all around her as if to include one and all in this indictment. “I refuse to pay any charges. Lord Pomeroy will be indignant.”
The travellers outside a passing omnibus stood up to listen, and as the hansom drove off with the woman and the little girl to the nearest police station, a man, wearing a “wide-awake” hat and a white tie, called out from the roof of the bus, “Three cheers for Lord Pomeroy!”
They were given heartily.
The more amply nourished of the two police constables then entered the four-wheeled cab. The boy was thrust in after him. The second police constable followed. A third police constable, whose dignity and ample nourishment, assisted by stripes on the arm, seemed even to transcend those of his brethren in the interior, hoisted himself with difficulty on the driver’s box, which groaned beneath his weight. As the vehicle moved off slowly, some of the bystanders also groaned.
The police station was round the corner of the next street, some fifty yards distant. The woman’s hansom had been there quite a minute by the time the four-wheeled cab appeared at the rate of three miles an hour.
The woman had deemed it expedient to remain in the hansom until its arrival. The absence of excited onlookers at the door of the police station had been a disappointment to her. It had seemed to be an error of judgment to arrive before the police. And by a curious oversight she had neglected to have a police constable riding in the hansom with her. However, with the consummate generalship gained by a long intercourse with public life she was able to repair this omission. She stood up in the hansom, and after catching the eye of several of the passers-by, called out to no one in particular in her most vibrant mass-meeting accents, “Let the prisoner get out first.”
The portly police constable got down from the box of the four-wheeler with an alacrity which a detached observer might have felt to be beneath the dignity of his physical equipment, and communicated this order to those who sat within. It reassured the woman to observe that the door of the police station had opened, and that on its threshold were a police constable and a pale man with a pen behind his ear. A second crowd was beginning already to assemble. As the boy in the grasp of his two custodians was marched into the police station, the woman had the gratification of noticing that by this time a number of eye-witnesses had come round the corner from the Emporium. Their interest was reassuring.
By the time the crowd on the pavement had grown almost large enough to warrant the woman’s descent from the hansom, another pale man, with a pen behind both ears, came out of the police station. The crowd made way for him respectfully. He approached the step of the hansom with the finely considered deportment of one who is accustomed to deal with men and things.
“I am afraid, Lady Pomeroy,” he said firmly, but with perfect courtesy, “we shall have to trouble you to come in and prefer a charge.”
“I have nothing whatever to do with thecharges,” said the woman, speaking over his head to the crowd. “I ask for my purse; I can’t live without it. If it is not returned to meimmediatelyit will give great displeasure to Lord Pomeroy.”
However, by this time the woman had seemed fully to decide that the hour was ripe to make a descent from the vehicle. As she did so one of those who had been privileged to take part in the scene outside the Emporium cried, “Three cheers for Lord Pomeroy!”
They were given heartily.
By an impulse which she was powerless to repress, the woman stopped in her triumphal progress to the door of the police station, and bowed and smiled gracefully on all sides.
“Three cheers for the Countess!” was the reward she received.
Amidst quite a display of enthusiasm the woman entered the police station, accompanied by the little girl with the golden curls, who was clapping her small hands with glee. She did not seem to be aware that several of the dolls she had been at the trouble to convey from the Emporium had fallen out of her pockets on to the pavement.
“Wot’s up, Bill?” said a male street-person, with a filthy scarf round his neck, to one whose neck was encased less adequately in only the band of his shirt.
“Bin pinching one o’ the unemployed,” said his companion, with an admirable assumption of the air of a Christian martyr.